Hi Jo,
Taken as history, this is a story of mercy. War is nasty, but for them it was a fact of life. Every year. If it wasn't the Midianites, it was the Amorites. Or the Jebusites. Or the bloody Hittites. Everyone was against them and it simply never stopped. Consequently, everyone was traumatisied and exhausted and enraged. Every soldier (on all sides) wanted to kill every last one of his enemies so that he would never have to fight them again. Let some live and it'd all be on again in ten years time! He wanted to go home and get a decent night's sleep. He was sick of worrying that yet another raid would carry off his family or his cattle or destroy his crops. He wanted to plant his fields and live in peace. There was only one way to achieve this. His enemies had to be utterly crushed.
Moses saved those girls. Tho they didn't know it, that was the luckiest day of their lives.
Bringing it closer, Churchill wanted to crush Hitler and it was right to do so. He was God's agent, destroying a terrible evil. Many innocents were killed. And hopefully, mercy often stayed his hand.
But anyway, I doubt it _is_ history. Taken as theological story, all evil must be destroyed. But few evils are so evil that nothing good can be redeemed.
A certain father cut off his daughter's arm in cold blood. She screamed and begged for mercy, but the man sawed away with his pocket knife until the arm came free.
Was he a loving father?
